I'm director of content strategy at startup Exitround. I was previously a staff reporter at Forbes covering start-ups and venture capital. I'm interested in entrepreneurs who want to change the world, or have a point of view or compelling story. Email me at tgeron.news@gmail.com. I was previously a reporter for Dow Jones VentureWire where my work also appeared in the Wall Street Journal. I've also written for Red Herring, the Long Beach Press-Telegram and other outlets. In a former life I was a web developer. Follow me on Twitter tomiogeron, or Facebook , or Google+.

Create Your Own Music With Zya: My Favorite Product From SXSW [Video]

My favorite product that I saw at the South By Southwest conference was a PC-based music creation product called Zya.

Made by startup Music Mastermind, Zya enables anyone with a PC, literally, to easily create high-quality music. With Zya people can make music no matter how bad they think they are musically, says Music Mastermind cofounder and CEO Matt Serletic, who is the former CEO of Virgin Records. “Zya is the one place in the world it’s fun and easy to make music,” he says. “Music is the one truly global language. You can make music by yourself or with famous content as well.”

People can start creating a song in any genre by using their own voice to hum a beat or baseline. They can also tap or touch to create the beat. Zya captures the beat from the computer’s microphone and turns that into a rhythm for the song. The rhythm dances on the screen and can be manipulated using different filters. The creator can then hum a tune and that will be added on top of the beat. The vocals can then be converted into any instrument and if your voice is horrible, Zya will autotune it.

After inputing their own music, users can mix in hooks, some of which are from hit songs. At launch Zya has Lady Gaga‘s “Poker Face” and “Just Dance,” as well as pop hits like “Like a Virgin,” “Born to Be Wild” and “Bye Bye Bye.” Users can also create a band, by selecting avatars to play different parts of the song, such as a gothic guitarist or a hip hop keyboardist. Given the history of the music industry, the licensing piece of Zya is as much of an accomplishment as the technology. Zya’s technology then adjusts the various parts of the song to make them fit together. Most of the music processing technology behind Zya is in the cloud, so it only requires a small download. Zya uses the Unity game engine technology.

Zya, backed by Liberty Global and Intel Capital and first announced in 2010, is cofounded by Serletic, who is also a Grammy-winning producer and songwriter, and Bo Bazylevsky, a former managing director and global head of emerging markets corporate bond trading at JP Morgan. It took about two years to get the licensing to the label’s songs, Serletic says. People will be able to sell their songs and if they use a hook from a licensed song, the label will get a revenue share with the consumer, along with Music Mastermind. The service is free but includes paid virtual goods, additional avatars and song hooks from top artists. The company has tested the service with buyers of Hewlett-Packard computers last year. The service is only available on PCs yet but Mac and other platforms are coming soon. There are not many gaming-type features to do things like compete with friends, but those types of features are likely coming soon.

Granted I only saw a demo, but the service seems to open up many possibilities. The service could be used by professionals and amateurs. With user generated content and hit stars on YouTube and other social platforms, could a star be born on Zya? Stay tuned. Others in this space include Mowgli’s Songster Facebook game, which is in beta.

See the video demo by Serletic above with my colleague Jeff Bercovici. Bonus: see Jeff sing!

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Thanks for mentioning Songster, Tomio! We believe we’ve built an incredibly fun and easy to use music creation game. And we did it all as a scrappy little startup! For anyone who’s interested in playing – www.playsongster.com

I downloaded Zya but i clicked on it and this popped upon the top it said ”Music Masterminds Launcher” then stated,”Only a single instance of this application can run”I do not understand that and ”need” instructions on what to do.

Part music creation engine, part social game and part discovery platform, Music Mastermind gives fans a new way to engage with music simply through voice and touch input, and collaborate with the world’s biggest artists in a 3D game environment. I am very impressed with this platform.